Ridiculous or Tragic
by Rainbowbananas
Summary: In which Sam and Dean don't communicate well, and have a faulty air conditioner, and kill a monster. And then everything changes, but not really. WINCEST


_A/N: Hello good people! First of all, to anyone following any of my other fics, I'm sorry for doing this instead of them, but frankly my Muse is a fickle bitch and she wanted to do this so this is what happened. I'm really not in charge around here._

_So this is set early in Season 2, when things were simpler. Actually, the first section is directly after "Everybody Loves A Clown," but then the timeline gets a bit… timey-wimey. Just go with it. Thanks for reading, and please tell me what you think! _

Sam lets out a long sigh and flops back on the windshield of the ancient Honda. Bobby's junkyard at dawn is a landscape of jagged edges and points of fire where the sun hits dusty chrome and cracked glass. He's going to miss Bobby's, which is stupid, because it's not like they'll never be back but he let himself get accustomed and now he's paying for it. After Jess, he told himself he wasn't going to do that anymore, was just going to let go of the idea of permanent geography as one of the many myths that children have to divest themselves of in order to function in the real world.

He's a hunter, his real world is different than other people's. Some of their myths he knows to be reality, some of their realities have to be myths.

The sound of voices rises over the junkyard like heat shimmer, his brother's strident bellow and Bobby's growl distinct without intelligible words. Sam inches down on the windshield, memories of hiding out in the cars when he was younger making him smile. Dean's voice rises again and Bobby laughs; something metallic clatters.

Sam may have given up the idea of home, but he's self-aware enough to realize he still depends on things. He's pretty sure that's some sort of human instinct, to find points in the world around which to orient yourself. For the past year or so, Dean has served that purpose for Sam. There are a lot of lesser points; the smell of gasoline, thick stomach-corroding coffee, blood, burning muscles after digging for hours. But they all relate somehow to his brother and Sam is also self-aware enough to realize this is about to become a huge problem.

Dean laughing and punching him in the shoulder, tripping him, ruffling his hand through Sam's hair and tossing food at him, Dean humming and tapping his foot and playing with a knife while Sam's trying to read. Dean's hands skimming all over his body, checking for injury, reassuring himself that he's done his job, kept his little brother safe.

And that thought right there, rough hands and big green frightened eyes and a wild grin, a slideshow of every hunt ever, that's enough to make Sam groan and thump his head back on the windshield, throwing a hand over his eyes.

Today they get back on the road. Today they get back to real life, with monsters and witchcraft and the constant paranoia that someone's eyes are about to turn black or yellow.

"Sam! Look alive, brother!"

Something soft and slightly damp whacks into the side of Sam's face and he sits up with a startled yelp, snatching it away. It's an old T-shirt of Dean's, one that should really be consigned to the rag heap at this point, because it's threadbare to the point of transparency and infused with motor oil and sweat. It's disgusting. Sam wants to bury his face in it and inhale.

"Dude. That is so gross." He tosses the shirt back at his grinning brother, who has appeared like a ghost at his side, and sits up. "Time to go?"

Dean throws the shirt over his shoulder and squints at Sam, the sun picking streaks of gold out of his hair and glinting off sweat on his neck. "Yep. Go say bye to Bobby, he says if you forget he'll track us down and beat us both."

"What?" Aware that he should be offended, aware that he should be aware of things other than Dean's rare smile. "Of course I'm not gonna forget, why would he – "

"Chill, Sam, he was joking. Just go say goodbye so we can get the hell out of here." All the light suddenly gone from Dean's face, like the sun decided to shine somewhere else, and he turns away. Sam jumps off the car and dusts himself off, follows his brother's straight shoulders back through the maze of wrecked cars.

Bobby hugs him with lung-compressing strength, tells him to take care of his brother without meeting his eyes. Presses a thermos full of coffee and a paper bag of sandwiches on him. Stands at the door and waves as Dean skids out in a wave of dust.

Sam turns his face to the open window and decides that if Dean notices, there is dust in his eyes and why does he always have to drive like there are cops behind them anyway.

**SPN SPN SPN**

(A few months later)

Virginia is a long slow drip of dark trees and honey-colored light into Dean's brain, soaking through him and leaving him numb. Or maybe that's the sleep deprivation. He's at the point where he doesn't even feel tired anymore, sand in his eyes and electricity in his veins; he could go forever like this. The last time he was asleep they were in Wyoming, and then when he woke up Sam said, "Look who's rejoined the land of the living!" in the same bombastic cracking-up-at-himself tone Dad always used.

And Dean could tell Sam didn't even realize where he got that phrase and even though Dean's supposed to be over this shit now he felt the hole in his chest rip open a little wider. So he kicked Sam out of the driver's seat and turned up the music and pressed the gas pedal into the floor and got them to Virginia in record time.

Now he's sitting on the hood of the Impala letting the setting sun cook him a little, watching the edges of the world turn gold. He takes a long drink of the beer in his hand, only sort of cool now that it's been outside for half an hour. He used to do this a lot after Sam left and then Dad started sending him on hunts by himself and he couldn't face the empty room or the bar full of strangers, so he'd just sit on his car and drink. He's working on picking the habit back up, because Sam's not going to stick around forever. He acts all sure of himself and there was that speech to the circus guy that kind of made Dean want to stand up and cheer but Sam is nothing if not rational and Dean can't think of a single rational reason for Sam to be sticking around at this point.

People are dying here, so here is where Dean needs to be. It's where Sam says he needs to be too, but Dean's usually so busy trying not to stare at Sam's mouth when he talks, sometimes he forgets to watch his eyes. Sam's face has gotten better at lying over the past year or so, but his eyes still give him away and sometimes it's perversely reassuring to catch him in a lie, just to know Dean can still read him.

He tilts his head back to finish the beer and slings the bottle away, across the empty parking lot, watches it shatter. Sam's voice in his head tells him _you shouldn't have done that, you're so obnoxious_, and then Dad's voice is laughing and telling Sam to _calm down, your brother's just letting off some steam, _and then they're arguing again, fucking yelling at each other like Dean's not even there.

With a low groan, he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and orders everyone to shut the hell up and for once they do. Christ, he came outside to maybe escape half the crazy, because Dad's voice really never shuts up but Sam is right back there in the room, and it's not fair that he gets to be in Dean's head too.

Dean hops off the hood and ambles back through the open door of their room, where Sam is hunched over his laptop at the table, the pale blue glow of the screen the only light in the room. The lights are off to aid the ancient air conditioner in its efforts, but though it wheezed and hummed valiantly since they checked in a few hours ago, the air inside got maybe half a degree cooler than the dusty lung-bake that's going on outside so they gave it up and just opened the door. Fucking summer. The monsters get extra hungry and the civilians get all loopy and do dumbass stuff like take long walks at night and the hunters just sweat through their jeans in shitty motel rooms.

And their brothers stop wearing shirts for days on end. It's not like the life they live hasn't made them extremely comfortable with each other, but _damn_. The light of Sam's laptop gleams on his sweat-beaded neck, flickers over his damp chest when he clicks something. His hair is tangled and limp, clinging to his neck and curling behind his ears. He looks somehow insubstantial.

"Hey," says Sam without looking up. "Thought you'd changed your mind, went to find a bar."

Dean's throat is suddenly Badlands-dry and he chokes a little, finally rasping, "Nah, dude, it's too hot. And this place is literally just one street and a gas station, I'm pretty sure whatever passes for a 'bar' out here's gonna be somebody's barn. And I do not drink around horse shit. Or people that think drinking around horse shit is ok."

Sam chuckles and adds nothing more to the conversation. He looks so goddamn comfortable, sitting there in nothing but a pair of old cotton boxers with one foot tucked under him, Dean kind of hates him a little. Instead of punching him, he strips down to his boxers too, sighing as the air whispers over his sticky skin. He flops down on his bed and turns on the TV.

Sam shuts his laptop. "I give up. I don't even know what I'm looking for. Maybe we should try talking to the witnesses again tomorrow?" He doesn't sound excited about the prospect.

Dean forces all the enthusiasm he possibly can into his voice. "Sure. Might as well."

"Right." Sam fishes through his bag and pulls out a book, lies down on his bed. Doesn't open the book, seeming more engrossed by the TV, which Dean has playing some old martial-arts movie. "Hey, wasn't the last time we were in Virginia the time we stayed at that place with the dolls?"

It takes Dean a moment to figure out what Sam means. The last time they were in Virginia together was the week before Sam left for college. It's a blur of tight-strung silence and aching muscles from the marathon of hunting their Dad had taken them on that summer. And Sam was eighteen and finally starting to fill out his ridiculous length and Dean remembers wanting him so bad it hurt, looking at his smooth brown skin and knowing he didn't want to stay.

When he sorts through all that, though, he finds a memory of laughing with Sam over the utterly horrifying décor in their room, a series of old-fashioned porcelain dolls in large wood-framed boxes with glass fronts, hung on the walls behind the beds and around the TV. "Oh God, man, that place was bad. I still say we should've taken care of those before we left. You cannot tell me things that creepy aren't gonna wake up one day with an appetite for eyeballs."

"Ha!" Sam grins at him and he grins back, terrified. Every time Sam smiles it feels like a countdown.

He gets up and gets another beer from the fridge.

Three, two, one, "Dude, how many is that? And how are you even still awake?"

"Pure concentrated awesome, Sammy, that's how. And maybe if you weren't such a giant girl, I would've offered you one, but now I regret to inform you that I didn't get any wine coolers so no drink for you."

Sam huffs and opens his book. "Whatever, man. Just try to pass out on the bed, I don't wanna carry your ass."

Dean mostly succeeds at keeping the snarl out of his voice. "Won't _ever_ ask you to carry me, don't worry."

On the TV, Jackie Chan is beating the crap out of about thirty guys and Dean is jealous. Noticing Sam's ignoring-you face, which hasn't changed since he was twelve, Dean tips his head back and gulps down about three-quarters of the beer.

Sam turns a page.

Dean rests a hand over his eyes and listens to the blood pounding in his head. The exhaustion is finally creeping in, or maybe it's the beer, but either way he can feel his body getting deliciously heavier, sinking into the bedclothes under the weight of the stagnant air. Eyelids fluttering, he finishes the beer in his slack hand and waves it around until he finds the nightstand.

Consciousness drains away a minute later and he lets it go in relief.

**SPN SPN SPN **

Sam wakes in the morning with a start, is halfway out of bed before he realizes he's not late for class. The clock on the nightstand reads 7:44. With his sense of urgency gone, sleep calls him back to bed and he considers it for a moment, looking around the room.

This particular motel, the Cardinal Inn, is brown and burgundy and pale beige, not a terrible combination but after an hour or so in the room, Sam became certain that the color scheme was about hiding the grime rather than creating an atmosphere. His laptop sits closed on the plastic table, an island in a sea of dark brown bottles.

Standing and stretching his arms up until his back gives a series of very satisfying pops, Sam picks up the trash can and moves about the room, collecting the bottles. There's even one sitting on the sink in the bathroom. Sam sighs, remembering Dean's increasingly erratic wander around the room and finally out to the parking lot as he drank his way down. He's not entirely sure what sparked Dean's sudden sleepless tear across half the country, but it was unsettling to watch and he really doesn't want it to happen again. He is sure it's going to.

Setting the trashcan down, Sam sits at the table and opens his laptop, then finally allows himself to glance at his sleeping brother. Sometime in the night, Dean shifted from sprawled on his back to lying on his stomach clutching the pillow to his face. It might be kind of cute if Sam didn't know he wasn't actually clutching the pillow, but the knife underneath it.

He's staring. He knows he's staring, knows Dean would call him – something, Dean has a million names for him that aren't his own – if he caught him, but it's so rare that Dean is asleep and Sam isn't, he doesn't know when he's going to get this chance again. Sweat glistens down the hollow of Dean's spine and beads in the dimples just above the waist of his boxers. When he breathes, the muscles in his back shift and bunch and for a second, the scene turns kind of sordid and porn-flicky, Sam getting up and pressing himself against that solid, long body, feeling the heat and slick of skin beneath his hands as he yanks those boxers off. The damp mess of Dean's hair between his fingers, the shocked gasp and then the eager moan as Sam tongues that luscious mouth –

Dean shifts and mumbles something into the pillow, slapping Sam back to reality, in which Dean is not even the slightest bit gay, never mind down for incest.

He's in so much trouble. He knew his fucked-up thing for Dean wasn't gone that first night he showed up in Sam's apartment and tackled him to the ground and the only thing stopping things from getting weird real fast was the fact that Jess was asleep in the next room. Then she was gone and Sam was unmoored from the world for a while, slowly coming back in with the tide of his feelings for his older brother. He hasn't even had time to really panic about that yet because Dad came back and they fought The Demon and Dad died and Dean seems even farther out to sea than Sam was.

Now they live on top of each other on the road, days spent inches away and nights sleeping with mere feet between them. Hustling in bars communicating solely with eye contact and body language and it's almost the same on hunts, and then there's the aftermath of drunkenness or injury and that always involves a lot of holding and hands in each other's blood and Sam is really in astronomical amounts of trouble.

He knows this thing will break him eventually. One day he won't be able to fight it anymore and then he'll do something incredibly stupid and ruin everything for both of them. But he can't leave, won't do that to his brother again, can't even imagine what life would be like without him anyway. And he needs the hunt. He's figuring out that he's actually pretty good at it, and it's an addictive sort of satisfaction to spend your days fighting and bleeding and _winning_, always winning, against things that are unequivocally evil. He's pretty sure college life would drive him crazy in under a week at this point, and the thought makes him grin, wondering what Dean would say if he told him that.

So Sam's stuck. And Dean is somehow broken, not irreparably, Sam hopes, but drowning in his own inner ocean, and all Sam can do is stand on the shore and shout his name.

"Mmmmfffuck…" Dean moans and shifts, curling up a little. "God dammit… fuckin' head…" He sits up, running a hand over his wild hair, blinking at Sam and grimacing. "Somethin' died in my mouth… think it was my tongue… might need to salt an' burn it."

"Toothpaste might be a less permanent solution," Sam says, biting back a grin. Dean when he's half-awake is another thing Sam doesn't get to see often, soft-eyed and his voice thickening with the drawl that comes out when he's drunk or tired. Sam knows he had it too, before Stanford, a sort of pan-Southern accent, nonspecific to any region of the United States, just the accent of people growing up mostly far from civilization. Maybe he'll get it back in a few years.

"Bitch, I'll show y'a fuckin' permanent solution," Dean growls as he stumbles into the bathroom and kicks the door shut.

When he emerges ten minutes later, Dean is wide-awake and obtrusive, banging around the room getting his stuff into some sort of order. When he can't take the racket any longer, Sam suggests breakfast, and Dean snatches the keys and heads out the door without another word.

Breakfast at the sleepy little diner is quiet, Dean methodically demolishing a stack of pancakes and Sam trying to figure a new angle on the case to keep from watching the syrup cling to Dean's lips. It's really unfair of him to be so relentlessly, disturbingly hot, and the expression on his face when Sam muffles a groan into his coffee says he has no idea what just sitting there eating pancakes is doing to Sam.

"What, dude? You look like someone just told you salad was going extinct." Bright green eyes sparkling, crinkling up at the corners. Big knuckley hands holding his fork like a deadly weapon. Completely fucking unfair.

Sam rolls his eyes. "That doesn't even… ah, whatever. Just thinking about the case. I'm not really looking forward to re-interviewing the witnesses, maybe we should go by the scenes again, try and find something there?"

Dean shrugs. "Sure, sounds good. I don't think they really knew anything else either."

So they finish and leave the diner and Sam is not watching his brother's ass as they walk out to the Impala. When Dean says something about the heat Sam nods and mumbles and waves off Dean's hand poking at his shoulder, something about Earth to Sammy.

By the time they reach the little trail where the first victim, a young woman running, was killed, Dean is twitching and clenching his jaw and his hands on the wheel, which is bad because they can't drive away from this place until the monster is dead.

The park where the woman was killed is a vast expanse of nature preserve, mostly deciduous forest with some small meadows here and there according to the brochure on the little kiosk. There is no one there except Sam and Dean. The Impala's sharp black lines look alien against the lush tangle of forest. The air is heavy and vibrating with the sounds of insects. Sam can feel sweat beginning to soak through the back and armpits of his T-shirt already.

Dean is marching through the waist-high grass, kicking at flowers and occasionally rubbing a hand over his hair, a sure sign something's bothering him. Sam jogs after him, looks at the weight of his frown and drawn eyebrows and decides to figure it out later.

The woman was killed right at the edge of the forest. The ground is a deep brown where her blood soaked in, a stain several feet across that looks like it could just be mud if they didn't know it wasn't. Dean stops and stares down at it, his face unreadable. Sam begins a thorough examination of the ground around it, moving in widening circles, looking for anything out of place.

At this point all they have are three dead people and a consensus from the witnesses that it was fast and silent and had claws. That could add up to so many things, some of them not even supernatural, there's barely a point even researching until they have more information.

Above them, the trees mutter and spread green light. As they continue their separate explorations, it feels like the rest of the world slowly recedes, leaving Sam and his brother in a cocoon of rustling leaves and indirect sun. After a while, Sam finds himself looking at Dean more than the ground, coming up with various impossible scenarios in which he kisses away the lines on Dean's face and Dean doesn't punch him. Most of them involve some sort of apocalypse, leaving them the only two people in the world. Sam thinks he might be ok with that; a lot of the time it feels like they're the only two people in the world anyway.

"There's nothing here." Dean's voice is a shock after the towering quiet. He's standing by the bloodstain again, arms folded. "Let's get to the next one."

They go. The next scene is the edge of a cornfield, in a ditch holding about an inch of brown water. The lines of anger on Dean's forehead and around his mouth have deepened, appearing carved in. He stands with his boots on either side of the ditch and looks down at where an eight-year-old boy was killed. Sam starts his widening-circle approach again and breathes in the clean smell of the cornfield. The sky is empty and bright above them.

There is nothing to find here either. They climb back into their car silently, and glide down the single lane road. The third scene, an echoing tunnel with ancient train track running through it, is covered in graffiti and not much else. They get back on the road.

"You know what I'd do if we weren't hunting right now?" Says Sam, surprising himself. The heavy expression on Dean's face is forcing all the air out of the car.

Dean flicks a glance at him and says nothing.

"I'd find a beach. I'd spend the first day just lying around reading, I think – I know, I'm a geek, you don't have to say it. Then I'd spend the second day swimming and – did I ever tell you I can surf?"

Dean's hands are no longer white-knuckled on the wheel. Sam doesn't know where this came from, this sudden urge to fill the air with words instead of tension, and isn't that normally Dean's job? But he takes his brother's release of his stranglehold on the steering wheel as an encouraging sign.

"I can. Jess taught me. I could teach you, if you wanted, I bet you'd be good at it. I know I picked it up faster because of all that ridiculous balance training Dad made us do; remember, shooting at stuff while standing on fence posts and shit?"

Dean is leaning back against the seat now, left arm out the open window and right hand just resting on the wheel, and his face looks kind of slack, stunned. He looks at Sam with wide eyes that beg for something but Sam doesn't know what and he's no longer sure his flood of inanity is fixing anything.

When he speaks, though, Dean's voice is his perfect even rumble. "Yeah, I remember. I remember you being kind of terrible at it too."

"Dude, I have I much higher center of gravity than you. So what do you think, I wanna go see the ocean. It's been a while since we've seen it." Pressing on despite the growing certainty that he's making a huge mistake, though he has no idea what it is.

"Yeah. You should do that." Dean's voice is so quiet now, blending oddly with the sound of the Impala's engine. The stunned expression is gone from his face and he's just driving, back toward the town Sam still can't remember the name of and their motel. It's barely noon.

**SPN SPN SPN **

The sight of the motel makes Dean want to break something. Like maybe Sam's face, his beautiful, happy, innocent face, talking about the ocean and Jess and fucking Dad like those are topics of conversation and not knives twisting around in Dean's gut. Talking about what he wants to do rather than hunt while Dean tries not to be irrationally jealous of the wind raking his little brother's hair back from his face.

Sam gets out of the car and stretches, and Dean stares without pretense at the firm curves of his ass, the jolt of skin bared by his shirt as he raises his arms.

He knows this isn't how most brothers feel. But then, he's never been in the category of "most" anything, so what's the difference? It's not like he doesn't already know he's a freak among the fringe, not fit for anyone's company except maybe barflies and one old surly hunter who puts up with him because he knew his dad. Certainly not the little brother he wants so very badly, and it looks like Sam's well on his way to realizing that.

He's already decided he's going to let Sam go, not going to try and keep him from whatever he wants to do. Doesn't mean he has to be happy about it, though. _You do your job_, Dad's voice says, and he snaps back that that's exactly what's happening here. Then he apologizes for his tone.

"Um, Dean? You coming?" Sam made it to the door of their room while Dean was examining the anger fermenting inside him. Little brother should be more careful, doesn't realize how close to boiling over things are.

"Yeah," he calls, and goes around to the trunk. "Just gonna get something first."

Sam goes inside.

The trunk offers up its riches to Dean, a treasure trove of weaponry and powerful herbs and innumerable false identities. He doesn't know what he wants except that he still needs some action, and Dad's voice says _better get ready then_, so he takes the weapons. All of them.

Sam looks up when he comes clanking and swearing into the room and half a word falls out of his mouth, just a general questioning sound, but Dean doesn't look at him, doesn't respond. A couple towels from the bathroom go across the beds and he begins laying everything out. The various blades take up half a bed on their own, and then the guns, pistols and rifles and shotguns of various lengths, and then back out to the car for all the supplies he's going to need to get every single one of their weapons in perfect condition.

Because the alternative is having nothing to do, and added to the list of things he's not thinking about is the fact that this hunt is going bad. This is going to be one of the ones where it feels like they lost, because right now they need more information, more facts, and the only way they can get those is to wait for someone else to die.

"Dean. What are you doing?" Sam sounds cautious and deliberately calm, like he's talking to a big angry dog. He's sitting at his computer not looking at the screen.

Dean snorts. "What are _you_ doing, Sam? Got any new leads to look up? Thought of anyone else to call?" He sits on the bed opposite the weapons and picks up his Bowie knife, runs a finger along the edge. Could use some sharpening, and those miniscule rust spots would be enough to earn him an ass-kicking if Dad were around.

"No, guess not. We should at least close the door, though; there is no way to explain this amount of weaponry."

Dean stays sitting down, pretends he didn't hear that. He doesn't want the door closed, doesn't really care if someone walks by and sees. Doesn't want to be shut in with Sam right now.

Sam huffs and gets up, closes the door himself. Then, the sound of doom: the rustle of cloth, the soft thump of shoes kicked off. Sam walks back into his sight shirtless and barefoot, the absurd cut of his hips hooking Dean's eyes and pulling them along as he goes back to his computer. The room is now lit only by the dark amber light of the sun through the curtains, so Dean flicks on the lamp by the beds and then the ceiling fan, which creaks to life in a little shower of dust.

The dust lands on his hair and shoulders and hands and the knife he's cleaning and he lets out an explosion of a sneeze into the warming air. When he blinks his eyes open again Sam is chuckling at him and shaking his head and that anger in his belly reaches full potency in about half a second.

Dean drops the knife back onto the towel and stands up, pulling his now dust-covered shirt over his head and tossing it into a corner of the room. He steps out of his boots and rips off his socks on his way across the room and yanks open the door, standing in the open doorway for a moment and just breathing, the smell of baking grass and tar filling his lungs.

"Dude. Shut the door. We can't wave our tons of illegal weapons at the general public, you know that."

Deciding silence has been working for him so far, Dean doesn't answer, just goes back to his knife, feeling the weird soft greasiness of the carpet under his bare feet. The breeze on his back when he sits down is hot like breath.

Sam rises from his seat and Dean snaps, "Don't."

"What the fuck, dude? Do you want to get arrested?"

"We're not getting arrested, Sam. Sit down."

Dad: _don't be an idiot, son. _

Sam's standing now, getting that scrunched-up pinched-mouth look that always used to precede crying when he was little, wild shouting as he got older. Dean does him the favor of playing along, gives him the same shit-eating grin he always used to reduce Sammy to tears or shouting.

"Dean. Close the door or I will." A little too much calm in that voice, slow and deep like Dad's before he'd lay some discipline down. It's all Dean can do not to shiver.

Dean looks up at Sam and meets his eyes finally and after a whole day of trying really hard not to do that it's like a physical shove, stumbling back and finding nothing to put your foot down on. "We're not closing the door. It's fucking hot, and there's no one fucking around, and I want the door fucking open. So sit the fuck down."

Something flickers over Sam's face, just a second that might be uncertainty, and Dean congratulates himself on still being able to strike fear into little brother's heart. Then he takes a step toward the door and Dean's on his feet too and they're inches apart staring at each other, fists clenched. Sam doesn't look like a kid so much anymore. Anger actually looks pretty good on him, weaponizing his angles and length.

"What the fuck is your problem? Get out of the way, Dean."

Dean thinks he might be about to get hurt. He thinks he's ok with that. "Make me, Sam."

And then the punch, beautifully done, not telegraphed at all, just knuckles slamming into his mouth and Dean drops, tasting blood. Instead of leaping to his feet, he lunges and gets Sam around the knees, bringing him crashing down on his back and he lets out a grunt and kicks at Dean's face, bare toes flashing by a hairsbreadth from his eyes as he rears back. Dean uses the foot to flip Sam on his belly and gets on top of him, pinning his legs with his knees and getting an arm around his neck.

The skin of Sam's back slides over Dean's chest and he's not not not thinking about how good this feels, how he wants Sam to keep struggling forever so he can feel his muscles quiver and jerk, but Sam's tapping his arm and he lets go, shoving himself up off the floor. Their heavy breathing roars in Dean's ears.

Sam slowly picks himself up off the floor, the beginnings of rug burn glowing on his elbows and hip bones and knees, and glares at Dean. His chest is still heaving. "Dean. What. The fuck."

And suddenly Dean doesn't even know, doesn't have the energy anymore to be in this little room with Sam looking at him like he's maybe stupid or maybe dangerous like a rabid animal. So he cuts his eyes away, grabs his boots and socks and shirt and a gun and somehow gets them all on while Sam is just standing and staring, arms folded, waiting on some kind of answer.

When Dean's got a foot out the door Sam finally realizes he isn't going to get one and starts to yell "Dean – !"

Dean slams the door behind him and grins bitterly at the sound of Sam cursing. He gets in his car and wonders who the hell he thinks he's kidding, telling Sam he won't drink in a barn.

**SPN SPN SPN**

The room after Dean leaves hums with quiet and the ceiling fan. The knives and guns gleam softly on the bed. Sam remains staring at the door for a long time, not waiting for Dean to come back, just waiting for things to make sense.

When they simply refuse to, he sits down on the non-weapon-covered bed and breathes, letting the last of the anger dissipate. Dean was always able to push his buttons like nothing and no one else, probably due to watching those buttons form over the years.

Dean's face as he looked up at Sam from the bed, all that banked power in his bare shoulders and crackling behind his level gaze – Sam blows out a breath and runs a hand through his sweaty hair. It's so hard not to revert immediately to kid-brother mode when they fight, so hard to keep himself rational in the face of Dean's all-encompassing air of authority. Dean angry is like having a thunderstorm decide it has a personal grudge against you. And, _God_, the feeling of his body on top of Sam's, holding him down, those hands all over him – no one could be expected to think straight with that happening.

Sam looks at his phone, sitting on the table. He knows better than to call this soon. They both need to cool down.

Figuratively, at least. The heat in the room with the door closed is blanketing everything, spreading its tendrils down into Sam's lungs and around his body as he sweats uselessly in the still air. He bundles the weapons back into the duffels Dean brought them in and opens the door.

Then he closes it again, spreads everything back out on the bed, and gets to work.

It's several hours later when Sam reassembles Dean's favorite gun, the Colt with the pearl handle, and puts it in the bag with the rest of the weapons. He's drenched in sweat, a rolled-up bandana keeping his hair out of his eyes and he's down to just his boxers. Stowing the bags behind the beds, he heads into the bathroom for a shower, puts on clean underwear, and finally opens the door again.

The air that hits him reaches down into his lungs and flushes away all the staleness of the room with the smell of dried earth. He can feel his whole body take a breath. The evening sun catches the dust layering windows and billowing over the road and sets it on fire, lending drama to the shadows of their seedy motel. The peeling paint on the wooden walls, the pale grey of the asphalt and the single black lamppost in the middle of the parking lot all take on an ethereal transcendence; painted by an artist who desperately misses home.

Sam leans against the door and has a sudden desire for a cigarette. He never smoked as a habit, didn't like the smell or the idea of something slowing him down, but the few he shared with friends at Stanford are pleasant, hazy memories of sitting on curbs leaning drunkenly together, feeling his heart speed up and something remarkably like invincibility.

He's arguing with himself over whether to go buy a pack when his phone rings. It's Dean.

"Hey." Sam says.

"Sssaammy. Sam. Dude."

"Yeah, man. What's up?"

"I… look. I'm an – hey, motherfucker, I said leave that!" There's a clatter and everything gets muffled for a moment. "Shit. Sorry. Anyway, Sammy, I'm an asshole. I don' – I dunno why – well, anyway, m'sorry. I fffound a bar, an' I'm pretty sure it _was _a barn, but s'not anymore, so come have a drink with me."

Sam leans back against the door and covers his face with his hand. The incredible flying feeling in his chest – Dean's not mad at me! – is telling him go, have a drink with him, at least be brothers and try and figure out what's happening in his head that's pulling him away. The rest of him is still a little pissed.

"And how, exactly, will I get there? You took the car, Dean. And I don't know where you are. And how are you going to get back? You're clearly not ok to drive."

"Aaah, Sammy, so negative. It's really not that far. Just go south about a mile from the motel an' you'll see it. An' then you c'n drive me back! After y'have a drink. Cuz m'sorry. An' I don'… I don' want this to be th'last…" Something that sounds impossibly like a choked-back sob cuts his words off and the good feeling in Sam's chest withers away and dies because that does not happen. Dean is a happy drunk and sometimes a violent drunk but never a maudlin, weepy drunk. So what the hell.

"Sam?"

"Yeah." Sam begins searching for clothes that won't make him smell like a hobo. "Yeah, I'm coming, Dean."

The walk to the bar takes a little under half an hour, and by the time he gets there Sam's pretty sure the shower and clean clothes were pointless. He's sweaty and dusty and muttering invective under his breath about the brother who drove off and left him and then made him walk to some ridiculous barn bar when he's probably passed out already.

When he gets there he sees what Dean means about the place maybe once being a barn. It's red and wooden and has huge double doors open and dribbling light and laughter out onto the packed-dirt parking lot. The Impala crouches incongruously sleek among rust-spotted pickups and mud-spattered Jeeps with huge tires.

Inside, it smells like every other dive in the country, beer and sweat and a cloying amalgam of everyone's perfume or cologne, all overwritten by the hieroglyphs of cigarette smoke on the ceiling. It's surprisingly cool, a series of massive fans set up along the walls keeping the air moving.

Sam spots Dean right away, an inexorable sort of lightning bolt feeling drawing his eyes directly to his brother. Dean is slouching on one end of the bar, leaning his head on a support beam, one hand wrapped protectively around an unlabeled bottle of amber liquid. He looks like a kid, wearing just a black T-shirt rather than his customary layers, the contours of his ribcage and chest delineated by his boneless posture, strong lines of his legs curled around his stool.

Sam reminds himself that he is angry, that Dean went from erratic to downright insufferable and then stormed out, that Dean should be grateful Sam is here at all. As makes his way over, however, this righteous clarity falters under the memory of Dean's voice when he called, small and lost, the sight of him slumped alone in the middle of this crowd.

He takes the seat next to his brother, nods thanks at the bartender who drops off a glass for him without asking. "Hey," says Sam.

Dean raises his head and just stares, wide-eyed, like he can't believe Sam's really there. The lines are all smoothed away from his face and Sam thinks again how achingly young he looks, all soft mouth and freckles. "Hey, Sammy," he finally says in a voice booze-melted and collapsing.

"So. I believe you were apologizing?" And God what a bitchy thing to say. What a completely asinine way to start this conversation and why does Sam suddenly feel so nervous? They've been here a million times before.

"Jeeeeesus." Dean drops his head into his hands and then scrubs his face, looks at Sam with more control than Sam expected. "At least get a few drinks in you before we do that, ok Sammy? Please."

Please. Please, Sammy, don't do that. What can Sam do but acquiesce to a request like that, spoken in that silk-over-gravel voice? He reaches, Dean passes him the bottle, Sam makes sure their fingers brush. He feels fourteen years old again, wonders if Dean would respond positively to a note: Do you like me? Check yes or no.

What Sam is assuming is whiskey gurgles into his glass and he raises it to his brother, who takes the bottle back in order to clink it against the glass and they both swallow their drinks, slamming glass and bottle back onto the bar in unison and shooting grins at each other. The whiskey lights Sam's chest on fire and he coughs, getting a laugh and slap on the back from Dean. By wordless agreement, Dean pours Sam another and they do it again.

An uncounted number of drinks later, it is fully dark outside and it occurs to Sam to wonder just how far ahead of him his brother is. Everything is glowing and blurred around the edges and moving just a little faster than he is, and he decided ten minutes ago he wasn't going to let Dean apologize. It's not like he's never been in a wild wrecking mood and right now everything is too serene.

The feeling of being the only two people in the world hits him hard again. He looks to see if Dean is feeling it too, that maybe nothing except them and the light from the bare bulbs above their head and the insects beating themselves to death on those bulbs is real.

Dean is wearing that expression from when Sam walked in, astonished and a little confused, his eyes huge and catching the light. They drove south one summer so Dad could kill some zombies in the swamps outside New Orleans and on the way they passed miles of forest swallowed whole by kudzu. The first thing Sam thought on seeing all those consumed trees was _Dean's eyes. _His brother has kudzu vines in his eyes and Sam's been compared to a tree more than once, so is it any wonder he can't fight free?

"Sammy." If anything, Dean sounds slightly more coherent now than he did on the phone. "I _was _gonna 'pologize. I was, I was an asshole. It was jus'…" He puts both hands flat on the table, appearing to steady himself. "Nah, doesn' matter why. S'ok. I'm just, m'sorry, Sam."

Dammit, he wasn't going to let him do that. But he got caught in the loose heat of him at his side, the exquisite openness of his face. "It's ok, Dean. It's ok, it's not… I finished cleaning the weapons."

Why he said that he has no idea, but the sudden delight suffusing Dean's face is so bright it dims the rest of the room. And Sam is abruptly impatient with the setting, these herds of completely superfluous people. He is suddenly sure if they were alone everything would be ok, and he refuses to examine that further, rejects quantification. He needs to get out of this bar and he needs his brother to come with him.

"Come on." Sam slides off his stool and wavers a moment, puts a hand on Dean's shoulder out of habit and feels the muscle tight and searing under his hand. Dean looks at him blankly but fumbles to his feet too, pulling out a few bills and tossing them on the bar, grabbing the bottle. Somehow Sam has his hand around Dean's wrist, fingertips on his pulse and it's vibrating fast, but he just slips and weaves along after Sam with an easy smile.

Outside the sky is a dark bruise color, beginning to be dusted with stars, and the pounding heat of the day is gone, the air sweet with its memory but cool and gentle now. They make it to the Impala, all the way at the back of the expanse of dirt near the entrance and stop, just leaning on the car.

After a few minutes, Dean takes a long pull from the bottle, wipes his mouth, and says, "Why're we out here?"

"I… um." He had reasoning, he knows he did, something essential that would remove all the hopeless context from their lives and he needed to explain. But all his mental processes have been hijacked by the image of Dean's lips around the mouth of the bottle, head tilted back, baring his throat and his ridiculous eyelashes brushing his cheeks. It's enough to get the porn flick running in Sam's head again, only this time he's holding the bottle so his brother can drink, then licking his way into his mouth and down his suddenly bare chest, taking him in his mouth and listening to him groan –

"Sam. Hey." A hand shoving his head brings him back and he closes his mouth with a snap, quits staring. Hopefully Dean's too drunk to notice. "You were tellin' me why y'dragged me out here." Dean is watching him.

Shit. This is exactly what he knew would happen, the drink or maybe just time has eroded his defenses and he needs to just say it or go crazy. But the look on Dean's face, the shock and then the lip-curling disgust he always has when Sam plays this scenario in his mind – the need and the fear meet with a resounding crash in his head and his tongue is held hostage to the battle. He's staring again.

"Oh." Something in Dean's voice momentarily stalls the madness in Sam's head and he blinks and Dean slides down to sit on the ground with his back against the wheel. He's cradling the bottle like a child and Sam can't see his face anymore because he's staring at the ground. "This's that conversation. Gotta tell ya, I didn' think ya'd do it in th'middle of a hunt. Guess m'just not as sharp as I thought, huh."

Something's gone wrong, Sam missed something, and he suddenly wishes he were a little less drunk. He's pretty sure he doesn't know what Dean's talking about, but Dean sounds sure, and so goddamn defeated, and shouldn't he know what could make his brother sound like that?

But he doesn't. "Dean. Dean, what. What are you talking about, what conversation?" He plops down beside his brother, their shoulders just touching, nudges him with an elbow.

Still staring at the ground, Dean continues in that flat voice, "You're leavin'. Right? Y'don' wanna hunt anymore, y'wanna go back t'college an' y'dunno how t'tell me." He laughs and it sounds so empty it hollows Sam out. "S'ok, Sam, I knew y'weren't stickin' aroun' forever." He takes another drink.

Sam is frozen, paralyzed, suffocating. Every second that passes is another second in which Dean believes something which is the opposite of the truth, something harsh and black that takes the color from his voice. The armies in Sam's head stop fighting but they don't do anything useful, just stand and stare and don't release his tongue from its prison.

"I – I don't – Dean, what – "

Suddenly Dean slaps a hand over Sam's mouth. Choirs of angels break into song about calluses and the scent of leather but somewhere under that is the awareness that Dean is tense, crouched, bottle forgotten, peering around the hood of the Impala into the darkness across the road. The fact that Sam didn't notice anything means nothing; Dean is always on, always hunting, especially when Sam's around. Nothing to do about it but try and help.

"What're you carrying?" Dean whispers and takes his hand from Sam's mouth. "What weapons?"

"Pocketknife and boot knife. That's it."

"Fucking hell. You didn't even bring a gun?"

"To meet you for a drink? In a not-barn? No, Dean, I didn't bring a gun! What's happening?"

Dean turns and meets his eyes and Sam thinks that if Dean touched him right now, he would burst into flames; his brother's eyes are alight and his hands flashing. Adrenaline makes Dean painfully beautiful. "I just saw something _fucking gigantic _move in that field. It's either a bear or whatever's been killing people around here."

The only trace of the whiskey is its scent on Dean's breath. That was something their father did too, just decide to be incapacitated later, whether from drink or blood loss or exhaustion. Sam's a little jealous, because the floating halos around everything aren't going away with his elevated heart rate and his brain is still chasing their conversation around in circles. He blinks hard and tries to focus. They're about to fight something apparently bear-sized with his two knives and whatever Dean has on him.

"Dean. Dean!"

Dean turns from peering around the car again. "What?"

"What are you carrying? What are you planning to do?"

A wide, daredevil grin. "Well, Sammy, I'm a little better prepared than you are. And, if I can get around to the driver's side, baby here," he pats the car, "will help us out a little more. What d'ya say, wanna play lookout?"

"You're going to charge it in the Impala?"

"What? Sam, how drunk are you? No, just – look, just watch the field. Make sure it stays there."

"What're you – Dean!" But Dean is gone, crawling around the front of the car, so Sam takes up his brother's position, watching the field around the headlights. The field isn't planted with anything, just tall grass and tangled flowers, hushing to itself in the breeze. The noise and glow from the bar are a lighthouse miles away, and Sam is out on a trackless sea with his brother and their car. Dean is doing something by the driver's side wheel, crunching in the dirt and banging against the side of the car.

"Got it!" he hisses.

Then a part of the field moves, a hulking mass that Sam took for a rise in the ground slips sideways without a sound, and Sam freezes against the car, some base mammal instinct telling him not to move.

"Dean get back over here right now and please tell me you have a shotgun or something."

"Haha, scared, Sammy?" The voice comes from behind him and he jerks, whirls to see Dean crouching against the car. He hands Sam a pistol, then pulls another from his belt. "I only have two extra clips on me, so we gotta make every shot count. Bullets are alternating consecrated iron and silver."

Sam gapes at him. Sometimes he forgets just how completely Dean internalized the philosophy of their training. Of course he has a hidden stash of weapons, and of course he's prepared for as many eventualities as possible.

"Where'd – "

"Well, I had a gun on me, seeing as there's something ripping people to shreds around here. The other one and the extra clips I hid in the wheel well after I started hunting on my own. Now, we gotta move this as far away from the people as we can. I think – "

Then the thing steps out of the field and onto the road and Sam yanks on Dean's arm to get him to stop talking. His heart is beating a tattoo in his ears and Dean's arm under his fingers is quivering. Whatever it is, it's huge. And definitely not a bear.

It moves in an odd winding scramble that makes no noise from the field to the road. It's vaguely wolf-shaped, but bulging with muscle and covered in what Sam took to be grass when it was hiding, now revealed to be long, sharp spines. No light reflects off it, it's simply a deep absence of feature cut from the night, stalking across the road.

"Well, shit." Dean says, fatalistically happy. "Ok, pretty basic plan here. I'm going out there to try and distract it. You're going to stay behind it and kill it dead while it's focused on me. Got it?"

All Sam can think is Dean is going to die believing he wants to leave. "What? Dean, no, we don't even know bullets will work, no, this is a terrible plan – "

"Hey." Dean wraps a hand around the back of his neck, turning him from the nightmare coming for them. His brother the soldier squeezes the back of his neck and gives him a heat-lightning smile, cocks his gun. "Sam. This is the plan. You with me?"

Goddammit. "Yeah. Dean – " Sam catches his brother's shoulder as he moves around the car. "Do not die. I mean it."

"Anything for you, Sammy." Then he's gone, moving shadow-quiet around the car, over toward the scrubby bushes clustered by the road. And what the hell is that supposed to mean. Sam is going to keep him alive long enough to find out. End of story.

That decided, he cocks his gun and sights on the thing, preparing to move. Dean is working his way down the road, trying to get as far from the bar as he can before it notices him.

It's definitely noticed something. It's swinging its head back and forth, side-stepping down the road with a delicate kingfisher gait, and it's keeping pace with Dean. Sam is several feet behind, gun still trained on its head, though for all he knows bullets will just piss it off and this whole endeavor is going to end with them disemboweled on this empty road.

A twig cracks under Dean's foot and he freezes, darting a wide-eyed glance back at Sam. The monster's head snaps around to point directly at Dean and now Sam can see its profile, short ragged ears and a gnarled jaw and a mouth that opens and opens and opens to reveal way too many teeth. A forked tongue flicks out and in as it breathes and it still hasn't made a single sound.

Then it lunges for Dean, moving with hallucinatory speed. One moment it's poised in the middle of the road and the next it's charging his brother, like someone cut a few frames out of a filmstrip. Dean comes up out of the bushes shouting, blasting away, but it dodges each bullet, flickering back and forth until it's close enough to take a swipe at him, claws half a foot long raking through the air, just missing him as he leaps back.

Sam stopped thinking when it went for his brother. He's standing in the street putting bullet after bullet into center mass of the thing and either it's made of smoke or he's a terrible shot because it just twitches and dodges again.

Another time-lapse jump and Dean's on the ground, his wild growls an awful counterpoint to the thing's total silence and Sam is yelling, sprinting at them. Dean twists and manages to pull the knife from his belt and then he shoves himself up into the thing's maw, letting out a sandpaper scream as its teeth close on his shoulder but the knife flashes in his hand and he buries it in the thing's neck.

With another cry, he rips the knife across its throat. It arches, flopping and jerking, trying to bite Dean and get away from him at once, black blood spattering the pavement. Sam skids to a stop next to it and almost vomits; the smell of its blood is thick like oil and ash in the air. It gives a final spasm and goes limp, its hideous head resting on Dean's chest. Its throat is simply gone, brown bone visible through torn sooty flesh.

Dean is gasping, covered in the thing's blood, and Sam can see white skin and red gashes in a ring over his right shoulder. There are shouts from behind them, the people in the bar.

"Dean." Sam kneels on the road, touches his brother's face. Dean's eyes are closed, his chest heaving, his arms flung out to either side of him. "Dean, hey, we gotta go. Unless you feel like sticking around for the authorities."

"Gaaaaahh… Sammy, get this thing off me, it fucking stinks."

Groaning, Dean shoves at the thing's head as Sam yanks on its legs and they free Dean from the corpse. Sam reaches down and Dean climbs up him until he wavers upright, blinking slowly at the mound of dead abomination. The noise of people is getting closer.

"Ok, you good?" Sam snatches Dean's knife and gun from the ground, sticks them in his belt. The sight of his brother, trapped under the monster, his scream as it bit him, his shout as he charged the thing – it's taking all of Sam' self-control to keep his hands off Dean right now. But they need to go.

"Yeah. Yeah, shit, how are we gonna get back to the car with everyone…" Dean waves a hand at the straggle of people visible in the light from the bar.

Sam grins at him. "I don't think you're going to like it."

**SPN SPN SPN **

Dean pats the dash of the Impala and shoots a smile at Sam. "Can't believe you went walkin' by yourself with a fugly running around and no gun. Good thing my baby has our backs." The bite on his shoulder burns and he can smell the acrid tang of the thing's blood so strong it's in his throat but he feels mighty, just slew a monster with a knife because he is a motherfucking hero.

"Yeah, Dean, I'm really grateful the Impala decided to hide guns in her wheel wells. That was really smart of her. Even though the guns didn't really do anything." Sam's feeling it too, apparently, because that sounded happy and almost like a compliment.

Only thing that would make it better would be Sam letting him drive, but as the more sober and less-chewed-on brother he strongly vetoed that. After hiding in the bushes waiting for all the civilians to go by, Dean was just ready to get out of there, wanting a shower and a bed and someone else in it with him and he's not thinking about who.

And hell, while he's listing things he wants, Sam quitting with the looks would be great, careful little bird looks like he wants to start talking. And Sam sticking around would be nice, and maybe pulling the car over and climbing in the back seat with him to work off some of this energy.

The drive back to the motel takes all of ten minutes. Sam is moving too fast, running around to help Dean out of the seat and his hands are everywhere. Dean does it himself, because really he's barely even bleeding anymore and these wounds are completely on the low end of the spectrum of seriousness. Also he thinks if Sam touches him right now he might not be able to control himself. All he can think about is brushing the stray hair from his brother's forehead, kissing the crazy-relieved smile from his face, getting that sweaty T-shirt off him.

So he stumbles to the room unassisted and somewhere along the way the whole thing becomes so ridiculous he starts laughing. Naturally on top of the weirdest life ever and a demon with designs on his family, he has to be in love with his little brother.

Dad chimes in with, _Winchester luck, son, _and Dean just chuckles, shaking his head. Sam is looking at him like he's not sure if he should be breaking out the holy water but Dean keeps laughing, because this is either ridiculous or tragic and Dean's had just about enough tragic, thanks.

Sam's voice in his head says _why not both_ but the Sam in his head is thirteen and drowning in one of Dean's old shirts so Dean has no problem telling him to shut up. What the hell does he know.

The room smells like gun oil and sweat but Sam leaves the door open. "Sit down, we need to get that bite taken care of," he says, and produces alcohol and gauze and thread from nowhere.

Dean sits on the bed and watches as Sam strips down to his jeans, because apparently they're not even bothering with clothes anymore. Not that it isn't incredibly fucking hot. "New rule, Sammy," says Dean. "No hunts in the summer in states that don't share a border with Canada."

Sam laughs and sits down beside him, a figure of gold with a bright smile in the dirty light. He reaches for Dean's shirt and Dean lets him, helps get the blood and sweat-soaked cotton over his head, turns away and gnaws the inside of his cheek when it peels off the bite. It looks like someone drew perforation marks in red paint around his shoulder, the whole thing already starting to swell. Sam starts working on getting them cleaned, wielding an alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

"These are probably going to get infected. Who the hell knows what was in that thing's mouth. We'll have to get you to a clinic when we get out of this town, get you all shot up with antibiotics and stuff." Sam's voice is low, almost absent, and Dean can practically see him writing the to-do list in his head, neat slanting handwriting and everything. If these are their last days together, fuck it, he's going to watch Sam like a movie.

"Yeah," Dean says, and it comes out a little too full, a little more raspy, than he'd meant, and Sam looks at him with pools of guilt spilling over his face.

"Dean," he says, and his whole body tilts away.

Dean thinks that's my boy, just rip off the Band-Aid, but part of him is screaming no please, do something, the world is ending. He doesn't say anything. He wants to say it's ok, wants to make Sam stop looking so desperate, because maybe then the hand twisting his own stomach will let go, but he doesn't say anything. His skin feels too tight.

"Dean. What you said back at the bar… it's not true."

What?

"It's not… I wasn't going to tell you I was leaving. I'm not leaving."

Dean blinks, trying to figure out what's going on here. Sam's not reading from the same script as he is, and where did the bed go because he can feel himself falling through the floor, but somehow he's still sitting next to his brother. "Yeah… yes you are. You've been… you've been working up to it for days, and… you wanna go surfing…"

"What? Dean. You honestly think I want to leave."

Maybe the bite is really infected, maybe the fever dreams have started already. "But… yeah, of course. Because, because you can, you can be normal and have shit and it's all my fault you're here anyway, and it's my fault Dad's dead and the Demon's not even… why would you want to stay?"

Everything goes crashing quiet. There is helpless horror on Sam's face, which doesn't make sense, because Dean just said all the stuff Sam didn't want to say anyway, shouldn't he be relieved? But he's frozen, eyes huge and hands hovering, still holding a bloody cotton ball.

Something completely unintelligible stutters from Sam's mouth and he leans forward, pressing his lips to Dean's.

It lasts only a second, but in that second, Dean's lungs implode, his heart stops beating, and his brain is completely overloaded with electrical signals. He is clinically dead, he's certain.

Then Sam's jerking away and stumbling up off the bed and mumbling mostly the words "sorry" and "Dean" and Dean is reaching for him, following him across the room.

"Sam, Sammy, come back here, stop, Sammy wait, please!"

Finally, Sam stops his wandering flight and just stands, trembling, hiding behind his hair, hands clenched at his sides. Dean realizes he's backed Sam into the wall but that fact is tossed aside by the chaos in his mind. "Sammy." His voice comes out a weak, shredded thing, and Sam twitches like he slapped him. "Sammy. I… what. Was that…"

"No, no, don't. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just forget it, please, just, just, sit back down and let me stitch you up and – "

"Was that real?"

All the air coughs out of Sam and he raises his hands, in pleading or surrender Dean can't tell. The question chases itself around and around in Dean's mind and for some reason he feels sixteen again, practicing balance, wobbling on one foot on a post trying to hit his target while Dad threw rocks at him.

"Was… it was…" The tiny whisper almost gets lost in the howl of his thoughts. Sam's still not looking at him, shrinking back and that breaks the storm in Dean's head. Sam should never be afraid of him, shouldn't be raising those long hands to defend himself, shouldn't be pale and panting with fear. Everything feels paper-thin, like if he's too rough with the world right now it'll tear.

He reaches out slowly, puts his dirt-and-blood covered hand on Sam's clean shoulder. It looks like a desecration, but Sam stops shaking and Dean's starting to think about paradise. Two minutes ago he was hunkering down for the apocalypse so now he's going to press on until the dream ends and gravity returns or Hell opens up and swallows him.

"It… you meant that. You're not… fucking with me." Again, what is wrong with his voice, why does he sound like he's been strangled?

Sam is wearing the expression of a man offered water in a desert, open-mouthed and incredulous and still a little scared and the effort of not taking the invitation of that mouth is vast and terrible. It's the only thing he can look at, can't even meet Sam's gaze longer than a few seconds.

Then with a noise like china cracking Sam steps forward but this time Dean meets him and it's like stepping into a rainstorm, the feeling of being engulfed and freed all at once. Sam's soft, open mouth on his and his hands tangled in the damp hair at the nape of Sam's neck, angling his head so Dean can explore the wealth being offered him. Long arms wrap around his waist and pull him closer so he has Sam pinned to the wall now, skin sliding over skin and this kind of touch should leave marks, their handprints branded on each other's hips and ribcages.

An eternity later, they pull apart, gasping into each other, still clinging with arms and hands. Dean looks and finds himself being watched like he's something miraculous and he can't help the tremor that runs through him .

"I… how long?" Whispers Sam, and Dean leans forward to capture his mouth again, feeling like an addict.

"God, Sammy… forever. Years. I don't…" He's not going to ask that question of Sam.

"Me too. I thought – "

Dean thinks more words might break him so he fastens his mouth to Sam's again and for the second time his little brother falls into his arms. Somehow they make it to the bed and Sam's hands are at his fly and he has never been harder in his life, rocking against Sam's leg as he opens his mouth and tastes salt and citrus on Sam's neck. Then Sam's hands are yanking his jeans and boxers down and taking him in his hands and red flashes behind his eyes and he lets out a wild moan, arching against the bed.

Dean finally gets Sam's pants down wraps his hand around the weeping erection he finds and strokes, gently. "Aah – Dean – Jesus – " Sam's voice is wrecked, battered, and he drops his forehead into Dean's neck where it slides on sweat as he thrusts forward into Dean's hand.

Sam's shoulder under his palm is steel and lava wrapped in satin, Sam's nipple sparking against his tongue.

A little bit of Dean's sense of self dissolves and he becomes nothing more than his hand on Sam and Sam's hand on him and their ragged breath an orchestra to measure the dance. Then Sam sobs his name and he's falling off the edge of the world, but when he opens his eyes his hand is wet and he can breathe again and Sam is looking down at him with his hair around his face.

Slowly, so slowly Dean can almost hear his joints creak, Sam climbs off him, sets his feet on the floor, pulls his pants back on. Time is clearly still running the right way for him, but for Dean everything is halted, his consciousness met with a brick wall, no more volition left. His eyes follow Sam by rote.

Too many seconds spent putting himself back together, smoothing his palms over his pants and then Sam finally looks at him and Dean can move again. He buttons his fly, runs a hand over his hair, doesn't get off the bed, just draws his bare feet up to him. He's staying here until he knows it's safe.

"Dean – " Sam stops, presses his lips together. His eyes are empty. "I don't…" he stops again.

The thing that should have occurred to him about paradise is it likely wasn't going to happen in an oven of a motel room in Virginia. It wasn't going to happen to Dean Winchester. If there's anything he knows for sure it's that if something looks perfect you should run the other way before it rips your heart out.

So. "It's ok, Sam. We don't have to…" Acknowledge what just happened. Speak to each other ever again.

Just be ok, Sammy. One of us has to.

"No. Dammit, no, I saw your face. You don't get to talk yourself out of having this." Sam's back on the bed with one long stride. When Sam started growing like he'd never stop Dean had an idea that Sam would be the brave one, the one who took as much as he wanted.

"I… Jesus, this is…" Incredibly fucked up, and the thing Dean wants most in the world. "Sammy, I can't do this to you."

Just like that, the clouds of uncertainty clear from Sam's face and rage shines through like the sun. "Excuse me? Did you forget who made the first move here? You think you're the only freak in this room?" That word, the one that's always made Sam flinch and lash out, it falls sweet from his mouth like a term of endearment. He's always been brilliant in anger.

So Dean leans forward and pulls Sam's face to his and kisses him, because now he can.

**SPN SPN SPN **

The pale sharp light of morning wakes Sam with a bar of sun directly across his eyes. He groans and tries to roll over only to find himself trapped, tangled in something warmer and heavier than a blanket. Blinking, he looks down and finds himself wrapped in his brother.

Dean's head is pressed into his neck, a leg and an arm thrown over Sam's body and Sam is pretty sure his brother's drooling on him. And all of this at once makes Sam feel like one of those legendary, sky-covering flocks of birds is about to burst from his chest.

Dean shifts and his hand twitches and he lets out a soft mumble, pressing his lips together in what looks like pain. Wincing, Sam slowly extricates himself and leans on his elbow, reaching a hand out toward the ring of angry red gashes along Dean's shoulder. Stitching them took ages, Sam feeling kind of high and weak and more reluctant to hurt Dean than ever, but Dean just watched his face and was still, didn't make a sound or seem to feel anything.

"Stop pokin' at me. I'm fine." Dean opens his eyes and a smile twitches across his face as Sam jerks back. "Fuck it's hot in here." He flops onto his back, all smudged shadow and lazy power, jungle cat eyes. "Can we get out of this town now?"

Sam gets out of bed and starts gathering the detritus of their stay, old clothes and bloody rags and stray bullets. After a minute of watching him, Dean joins in, and they're packed and peeling out in less than half an hour.

When Sam offers to drive Dean snarls at him and then kisses his temple as he takes the keys. Instead of staring out the window Sam watches Dean, then rests a hand on the back of his neck, running his fingers through his hair. At a gas station, Dean presses Sam back into his seat and kisses him breathless before getting out of the car and strolling away, the same arrogant smirk in his step Sam's used to seeing when a girl gives him her number.

It's all terrifyingly prosaic. Sam spends a lot of time trying to figure out why neither of them are worried.

That evening, they call Bobby. "Loup-garou," he says, halfway through Sam's explanation of how it moved, the way it took people from the edges of places. "Think werewolf with extra IQ points and a mean streak rather than mindless bloodlust. And you don't need silver to kill 'em, but you found that out already. Came from France, originally, but you know we got all kinds here in this great land. Oh, and before you ask, no, your brother's not gonna turn into one. A shot of penicillin might not be a bad idea though."

Naming the thing is a relief, in a distantly academic way. They've killed things with no explanation before; there are things in the world no one ever sees until it's too late, but the idea that someone else has done what they've done makes the real world seem a little closer.

Which is an insane thought at this point, Sam's pretty sure. And it still doesn't bother him.

Dean bullshits with Bobby for a couple minutes, bragging about, "Ganking it basically by myself, Bobby, you shoulda seen this kid, he was no help at all," and then listening very quietly as Bobby shouts at him on the other end. "Right. Yeah. Well, that's good. No, seriously, Bobby, what – " He takes the phone away from his ear, looks at it in disbelief and tosses it at Sam. "Hung up on me."

"Yeah, well," says Sam, and finds he has nothing else to say. A filigree of silence hangs between them, unraveled a little by the rush of the road beneath the tires. They're going north, no particular destination. Dean says they'll stop when he can breathe.

"You're ok, right?" The question feels inevitable, Sam's just surprised he wasn't the one to ask it. Dean's looking straight ahead, and Sam knows he's preparing himself for a negative, for something to go wrong. He wonders how long it'll take him to convince Dean he doesn't have to do that.

"Yeah. I am. I really am; I don't know why, and that's a little weird, but I am."

"Good. Me too."

Sam can't help laughing at that, because of all the things they are, ok is not one of them. Dad is still dead, the Demon is still nebulously after them, and Sam's pretty sure Dean said last night that Dad being dead was his fault. So they've both just told each other spectacular lies with smiles on their faces.

But they were real smiles. And the air through the open windows already feels cooler, and the smell of exhaust is the purest reminder of home Sam's ever known.

_A/N: Well. There we go. I am oddly nervous about this one, probably because I actually took like a week to edit rather than my normal M.O. of doing a quick run-through for glaring typos and posting right away. So thoughts, be they positive or negative, would be greatly appreciated and rewarded with internet cupcakes. Peace!_


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